They sat down for a few minutes and waited for her. David lit a cigarette and offered one to Molly but she declined it. It was a full five minutes before the guard appeared at the window in the door to the jail, as the heavy door was unlocked, and Grace stood looking at them hesitantly. She was wearing the same jeans and T-shirt. There was no one to bring her clothes, and she had nothing else with her. All she had was what she had worn the night she had killed her father and been arrested.
He watched her carefully as she entered the room, she was tall and thin and graceful, and in some ways she looked young and shy, but when she turned to look at him, he saw that her eyes were a dozen years older. There was something so sad and defeated there, and she moved like a doe about to dash away into the forest. She stood staring at them, not sure what to make of their visit. She had spent four hours with the police that day, answering questions, and she was exhausted. They had advised her that she had the right to have an attorney present at the questioning but she had already admitted to shooting her father, and didn't think there was any harm in answering their questions.
She had gotten the message that David Glass was going to be her attorney, and he would be over to see her later. She had heard nothing from Frank Wills, and she still hadn't called him. There was no one to call, no one she could have turned to. She had read the papers that day, the front page and several articles were devoted to stories about the murder, about her father's admirable life, his law practice, and what he had meant to so many. It said relatively little about her, except that she was seventeen, went to Jefferson High, and had killed him. Several theories had been offered as to what must have occurred, but no one ever came close to what had really happened.
“Grace, this is David Glass.” Molly broke the silence by introducing them. “He's from the public defenders’ office, and he's going to represent you.”
“Hello, Grace,” he said quietly. He was watching her face, he hadn't taken his eyes off hers since she'd entered the room, and it was easy to see that she was desperately frightened. But in spite of it, she was polite and gracious when she shook his hand. He could feel her hand shaking in his own as soon as he touched her fingers. And when she spoke, he could see that she was a little breathless, and he remembered Molly's comment about her asthma. “We've got some work to do here.” She only nodded in answer. “I read your files this afternoon. It's not looking so good for the moment. And mostly what I'm going to need from you is information. What happened and why, whatever you can remember. Afterwards, we'll get an investigator to check things out. We'll do whatever we have to.” He tried to sound encouraging, and hoped she wasn't too frightened to listen.
“There's nothing to check out,” she said quietly, sitting very straight in one of the four chairs. “I killed my father.” She looked him right in the eye as she said it.
“I know you did,” he said, seeming unimpressed by the admission, and watching her intently. He knew what Molly had seen in her. She looked like a nice girl, and she looked as though someone had beaten the life out of her. She was so remote, one almost wondered if one could touch her. She was more like an apparition than a real person. There was nothing ordinary about her. Nothing to suggest that she was a seventeen-year-old girl, a teenager, none of the life or ebullience one would have expected. “Do you remember what happened?” he asked her quietly.
“Most of it,” she admitted. There were parts of it that were still vague, like exactly when she had taken the gun out of her mother's night table. But she remembered feeling it in her hand, and then squeezing the trigger. “I shot him.”
“Where did you get the gun?” His questions seemed very matter-of-fact, and oddly unthreatening as they sat there. He had an easy style, and Molly thanked her lucky stars again that he had gotten the case assigned to him. She just hoped he could help her.
“It was in my mother's nightstand.”
“How did you get it? Did you just reach over and take it?”
“Sort of. I just kind of took it out.”
“Was your father surprised when you did that?” He made it sound like the most mundane question, and she nodded.
“He didn't see it at first, but he was surprised when he did … and then he tried to grab it and it went off.” Her eyes glazed as she remembered, and then she closed them.
“You must have been standing pretty close to him, huh? About like this?” He indicated the three feet between them. He knew she had been closer than that, but he wanted to hear her answer.
“No … uh … kind of … closer. …” He nodded, as though her answer were ordinary too, and Molly tried to feign disinterest, but she was fascinated by how quickly Grace had started talking to him, and how much she seemed to trust him. It was as though she knew that she could. She was much less defensive than she had been with Molly.
“How close do you think? Like a foot maybe? Maybe closer?”
“Pretty close … closer …” she said softly, and then looked away from him, knowing what he must be thinking. Molly must have told him her suspicions. “Very close.”
“How come? What were you doing?”
“We were talking,” she said hoarsely, sounding breathless again, and he knew she was lying.
“What were you talking about?”
His question and the ease of it caught her off guard and she stammered as she answered. “I … uh … I guess, my mother.” He nodded as though that were the most natural thing, and then leaned back in his chair pensively and looked at the ceiling. He spoke to her then, without looking at her, and he could feel his heart pound in his ears as he addressed her.
“Did your mom know what he'd been doing to you, Grace?” He said it so gently, it brought tears to Molly's eyes, and then slowly he looked at Grace, and there were tears in her eyes too. “It's okay to tell me, Grace. No one's ever going to know, except us, but I have to know the truth if I'm going to help you. Did she know?”
Grace stared at him, wanting to deny it again, wanting to hide from them, but she couldn't anymore, she just couldn't. She nodded, and the tears spilled from her eyes, and ran slowly down her cheeks. As he watched her, he took her hand and squeezed it. “It's okay, Grace. It's okay. You couldn't do anything to stop it.” And then she nodded again, and an anguished sob escaped her. She wanted to have the courage not to tell them anything, but they were all hounding her, the doctor, the police, now him, and they asked so many questions. And for some reason she herself didn't know, she trusted David. She liked Molly too, but it was David whom she wanted to turn to.
“She knew.” They were the saddest words he had ever heard, and without knowing John Adams, he wanted to kill him.
“Was she very angry at him? Was she angry at you?”
But Grace stunned both of them when she shook her head again. “She wanted me to … she said I had to …” she choked on the words and had to battle her asthma,“… had to take care of him, and be nice to him … and … she wanted me to,” she said again, her eyes brimming with tears, and pleading with them to believe her. They both did, and their hearts went out to her as they watched her.
“How long did it go on?” he said softly.
“A long time.” She looked drained as she glanced back at him. She looked so tired and frail, he almost wondered if she would survive it. “Four years … she made me do it the first time.”
“What was different that night?”
“I don't know … I just couldn't anymore … she was gone. I didn't have to do it for her anymore … he wanted me to do it in her bed … I'd never done that before … and … he … he hit me … and did other things.” She didn't want to tell them all that he'd done to her, but they knew it anyway from the exam and the photos. “I remembered the gun … I just wanted him to stop … to get off of me … I didn't really mean to shoot him … I don't know. I just wanted to stop him.” And she had. Forever. “I didn't know I'd kill him.” But she had told them what had happened at least. And in a way, she felt relieved. And exhausted. It was different from telling the police. She knew that Molly and David wouldn't tell anyone, and they believed her. She knew that the police never would. They thought her father was perfect. They all knew him professionally and some even played golf with him at his club. It seemed like everyone in town knew him and loved him.